Few franchises have inspired more cosplay than "Star Trek". Head to any sci-fi convention and chances are you'll encounter representatives of numerous Starfleet ranks and eras, and possibly an alien species or two. You may even bump into a particularly imaginative fan dressed as a starship.
That penchant for fancy dress isn't just limited to "Trek"'s fanbase, however. Federation officers are just as keen on raiding the costume closet, whether they need a disguise for an away mission, are planning a trip to the holodeck, or have been manipulated by the meddling of a cheeky cosmic entity.
This week's episode of "Strange New Worlds" extends that long tradition, as "Once La'an a Time" plunges the Enterprise's senior officers into their very own Disney fairytale.
MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD! ANYONE YET TO WATCH "ONCE LA'AN A TIME" SHOULD PROCEED WITH CAUTION TO AVOID VIOLATING TEMPORAL PRIME DIRECTIVES.
It's easy to see why crews might get bored stepping out in the same Starfleet uniforms every single day, even if it eliminates all your worries about what you're going to wear tomorrow. Luckily, missions to pre-warp alien cultures often provide an excuse to experiment with planet-appropriate clothing, while travelling through time offers an opportunity to try out some fashions from the(ir) past.
The "Next Generation" and "Deep Space Nine" crews were always dab hands at this, whether hanging out with Mark Twain in "Time's Arrow", going undercover in the build-up to San Francisco's (fictional) 2024 Bell Riots in "Past Tense", or wearing 'authentic' 2063 outfits in "First Contact".
Sometimes, when they've had the implausibly good fortune to land on planets that mirror Earth's own couture, crews have managed to tick both boxes at the same time. In Original Series episode "A Piece of the Action", Kirk, Spock and Dr McCoy masquerade as 1920s gangsters, while recent "Strange New Worlds" outing "A Case of Chiaroscuro" borrows extensively from 1940s film noir.
But it's holodeck adventures that really give Starfleet officers to let their hair down, escaping from their everyday lives by pretending they're someone they're not.
For example, Captain Picard spends his downtime solving mysteries as hard-boiled detective Dixon Hill ("TNG"'s "The Big Goodbye"), Data likes to unleash his inner Sherlock Holmes ("TNG"'s "Elementary, Dear Data"), Dr Bashir dons a tux as a James Bond facsimile ("DS9's "Our Man Bashir"), and Harry Kim and Tom Paris get their kicks by painstakingly recreating 1930s sci-fi adventure serials ("Voyager"'s "Bride of Chaotica").
The problem with holodecks, however, is that they're ridiculously prone to the sort of malfunctions that drag other members of the crew into the cosplay party — whether they want to come along or not.
In "Our Man Bashir", a transporter accident turns the "DS9" crew into participants in a globetrotting spy mystery — Captain Sisko becomes the Bond villain-esque Dr Noah, while Jadzia Dax is saddled with the ridiculous moniker of Dr Honey Bare. The unexpected intervention of photonic beings forces Captain Janeway to become Arachnia, Queen of the Spider People (yes, really), in "Bride of Chaotica".
In "TNG"'s Western adventure "A Fistful of Datas", a shipwide computer malfunction ensures that all the bad guys in the frontier town of Deadwood look like Data (Brent Spiner has a field day).
And in "Strange New Worlds"' "A Space Adventure Hour", the Enterprise's computer uses likenesses of the crew to populate a murder mystery simulation which — of course — goes, potentially, lethally wrong. (It's worth noting that the tech's dubious safety protocols do come into their own when Picard lures some Borg into a Dixon Hill simulation in "First Contact", before killing them in a barrage of Tommy gun fire.)
Sometimes a starship encounters a cosmic entity that — for some hard-to-fathom reason — chooses to study lesser mortals by forcing them into a big old game of dress-up.
Q was always the master of this, whether pretending to be a Starfleet officer, an old-school military commander or even the leader of a mariachi band. And in "TNG"'s "Qpid", he believes that cosplay might be the solution Picard's romantic problems, as he transforms the crew into Robin Hood and his Merry Men — Worf, a grudging Will Scarlet, famously protests that "I am not a merry man!"
The events of "Once La'an a Time", meanwhile, are a direct consequence of the Enterprise's previous encounter with a Boltzmann Brain in season one episode "The Elysian Kingdom" — an incident only Dr M'Benga remembers.
There, the brain transforms the crew into fairytale characters from a favorite book of Rukiya, M'Benga's terminally ill daughter. She subsequently left to merge with a cosmic entity, and has since created a flat planet that exists "in defiance of physics and logic" — it's also home to a fairytale castle, fairies and magic mirrors, and populated by doppelgangers of the Enterprise crew. Of course, Pike and co have no choice but to don intricate medieval outfits — again — to help them blend in.
In story terms it's an excuse for La'an to reconcile her increasingly volatile self with the softer side embodied by her fairytale princess double. The problem is — like so many of "Star Trek"'s sillier dress-up episodes — the largely forgettable "Once La'an a Time" looks like it was much more fun for the cast to make than it is to watch. Indeed, you suspect that Mr Worf would not approve.
The finale of "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" season 4 debuts on Paramount+ on Thursday 24 September. All previous episodes are also available on the platform.
